


Training 101

by Skyepilot



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Hydra (Marvel), Rescue Missions, non binary character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-17
Updated: 2019-10-17
Packaged: 2020-12-20 21:29:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21063488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skyepilot/pseuds/Skyepilot
Summary: Daisy and Robot Phil out in the field. Set post S6.





	Training 101

**Author's Note:**

  * For [zauberer_sirin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/gifts), [nausicaa_of_phaeacia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nausicaa_of_phaeacia/gifts).

> Kind of complicated how to tag this, but it's basically Robot Phil from the end of Season 6 and how Phil is not Coulson, and Daisy's feelings about acknowledging Phil's agency and personhood. And also flirts, because Daisy was in love with Coulson, and Phil looks like Coulson, but is not. And robot Phil is non-binary, so hopefully, I did okay with how I wrote them.
> 
> Anyway, enjoy!

“After all of that stuff with Sarge, I thought you'd be tired of looking at this face.”

She stares back at a familiar expression, a little bit smug. The twinkle in the eyes, the lines in the corners drawing. Phil is being funny. They do that a lot. It's a go-to mask. Like the suits. It's what everyone responds best to, what's expected.

Sarge was a complete asshole, a being with a god complex wearing the skin and leeching off the memories of a person she had loved more than anything. She had never thought that he was Coulson.

No one could be Coulson.

What she won't ever tell Phil was how hard she slammed down the button that brought them online. Done purposefully, before the questions of what it might actually mean entangled her and made her hesitate.

She just couldn't imagine life without some version of Coulson. That's what she tells herself. Trying to settle into something comfortable and familiar after everything that's been lost.

“Oh, but next time? Ask for permission first.”

“Huh?” she asks, watching the cop car drive by, trying to get back to eyeing the entrance off the alley with Phil standing against her back almost like a shadow.

Wait. Is this about the kissing thing? Right now, when they can't even be sure if the cops were casing the same location or watching it on behalf of the terrorists they're monitoring?

She rolls her eyes hoping that they catch it even with the dim streetlight barely creeping into the alley.

“That's a training thing,” she says pointedly, waiting for Phil to keep up. “A training 101 thing?”

“I've never had that training,” Phil replies, lips pursed, and nodding at her to turn and keep watching the entrance.

“Because you're not Coulson,” she sighs, reminding herself. “I'm sorry, Phil. We'll have to work on your training.”

“It's not a bad thing, is it?” Phil says, after a beat of comfortable silence. “That I'm not Coulson?” As though they are still mulling over this idea, too.

“No,”she says resolutely, zipping up her leather jacket. “You're a lot like him, though.”

She leans into the actual shadow of the alley as a couple of men in business suits emerge from the door they have eyes on. No doubt very up to no good.

“They're a long way from the board room,” Daisy says in a whisper, watching them walk down towards their parked vehicle at the other end of the alley on the street.

“Let's go,” Phil motions when they're clear, moving forward precisely just as she was done counting in her head. Timing the hole in the security protocol that they're going to exploit to get entrance.

Following after Phil, she watches a hand move over the brick, finding the hidden panel and lifting it to place a palm against it. Calculating as the information from the security routine comes flooding in.

“I used to have to do this with a laptop,” she opines, looking at the timing sequence count down on the watch on her wrist and checking their surroundings again.

“If this doesn't work,” Phil says smoothly, “We can always try your way.”

That twinkle in their eyes again tugs at her memories. Like Phil would almost love it if it came down to that. She would unleash her powers to blow the door in and then they'd have to put up a fight.

“You really do need some field training 101,” she tells him. “Or, to rely more on what you know for now, not just first time experiences?”

“It's true, I am very new at this,” Phil says, cocky now that their efforts have paid off and the door lock clicks. “But I'm a quick study, and the first time is always hard to forget.”

“Awesome. We're in,” she says flatly into the com watch. “Going dark.”

She pushes past and takes the point while Phil holds open the door for her. They may be made of different, tougher stuff, but she's still the muscle of this operation.

And Phil is still learning. Doing things, making choices, she knows Coulson wouldn't. This rubs some of the team the wrong way; like they thought Phil would somehow be a virtual copy of Coulson.

Mack didn't, of course. Neither did Elena. May was outright against it for reasons that were personal. They had all lost Coulson, and all of the technology in the universe couldn't remake him; not even a collection of memories. Not even if Fitzsimmons and Deke could create a perfect hologram or an exact replica.

It was such a relief to her to find out Phil didn't actually think they are Coulson. More like a repository of his knowledge. Because there was no way she could keep up that kind of pretense.

“You would think these guys could be more subtle,” Phil says from behind her, looking at the obvious propaganda posters being used as art to line the hallway.

“You'd think we wouldn't have leaked recordings of their secret dinner meetings with a branch of HYDRA on the interwebs, but here we are.”

There is another door, and then behind that, they should get access to their computers and that's when the fun begins.

“Calculated?” Phil asks, repeating the routine from the front entrance here. “Like, using your office to talk about Inhumans as dangerous and that they should be put in cages, hoping someones act while you claim plausible deniability?”

“You do learn quickly,” she answers, smiling sharply at him as the door slides open.

“The appearance of the Chronicoms, the leaks of the LMD technology SHIELD used? It's created a very similar, complicated discussion about what is human and what isn't.”

“And you're a little bit of both,” she nods and follows their motions for her to get through the door.

“Part of me is human,” Phil reminds her. “Almost all of my memories are human.”

She knows she's pretty much the only person they talk to about this. That they find some sort of common affinity between their understanding of their identities as something “other”.

What's bothering her now, though, is that the facility seems to not be staffed, but automated. She wonders what the guys in suits were doing here, who they were meeting with.

“Are you thinking what I'm thinking?” Phil asks her, as they approach the spare conferencing set up and they look over the device.

It just takes a second of silence for Phil to pause, while she searches their eyes. The feeling that they share something, that even after all of this, they are still somehow connected, is there.

“That it's a trap?” she asks them, with a deep sigh.

“Yeah,” Phil nods, solemnly, then grins. “We might need to do this your way after all.”

“Don't get so excited,” she says in a whisper, not sure why except that she's a little spooked.

At first, she thought Mack kept assigning them together in the field because he had seen how fast she hit that button. Until Mack had laughed at her in his office and said, “No, Phil asked to work with you, Tremors. Wanted to be in the field, like you. Want to be an S.O.?”

She hadn't said yes, but she hadn't said no, either. Just stared back at Mack with a slight frown as she attempted to figure out what this meant, exactly.

There is something Phil really likes about Coulson, too. When they look through those memories, there are parts that they like and have made a part of who they are. She can't disagree. There were so many things she loved about Coulson, too.

Phil is about to connect with the console and she looks at their hand, and places hers on their arm, stopping to make her own calculations. “Don't.”

“Could at least make this mission not a total loss,” Phil tells her. “Capture some data?”

“Did anything happen when you interfaced with the security system. Anything unusual?”

“No,” Phil says, turning towards her, looking at her hand still on their arm. “It tried to infiltrate my security protocols, but...”

“We need to go,” she says, pulling on their arm towards the door.

She can hear the lock clicking in place to shut them inside. She knows what they're after now.

Raising her hand, she concentrates and tries to use her powers in sheer force to remove the door. It's reinforced. She still tries again.

“Dammit!”

Phil moves forward quickly and runs fingers along the edges and seams of the door. “It's reinforced,” they tell her over a shoulder.

“You think?” she says impatiently. Getting troubled by the minute at the possible consequences of Phil falling into the hands of HYDRA's tech branch.

Of them experimenting on Phil, of hacking, or tampering to get to those memories.

“I haven't tried punching it,” Phil says, joking.

When she doesn't respond, they come closer, lowered tone, watching her nervous energy.

“Daisy, I can erase my memories before they can access them.”

She freezes. “Stop,” she tells, pushing such a blunt thought away. “That's not going to happen.”

“There's a backup at the base,” they say earnestly. “Fitzsimmons can restore them.”

“Why are we even having this conversation right now?” she asks. “Would you let me do-”

“It's the purpose I was created for,” Phil says, sounding too logical. “It would protect SHIELD.”

“You know you're more than that. Or you wouldn't be here with me right now. Do I need to make it an order?”

“No,” they say, looking chastised, and then their eyes start to practically sparkle.

“I need you to stop that,” she says, decidedly, pushing past. “You're distracting me.”

Phil makes a pleased noise and steps out of her field of vision.

She takes a deep breath and closes her eyes, concentrating on the door, on the mechanisms inside and the contours of them, working them loose individually. Why does this have to be so much harder than just blowing it off its damn hinges?

“I do love watching you work,” Phil says admiringly.

She's about to tell them how it's not helping, how she didn't come here thinking she'd end up on a rescue mission, as the lock comes loose.

Perfectly timed, she thinks, catching her breath and staring back at Phil with a frown.

She lets Phil flex muscles by pointing at the door, and watches as they push the heavy metal to the side, and then help her through, offering a hand.

Before she blows the outer door off to the alley, they talk. About what might be on the other side and to make sure they're on the same page about an exit strategy. Phil doesn't bring up erasing his own memories as an option this time.

But the alley is empty. There's no one there.

Somehow, that doesn't make her feel better. At all.

“Let's get out of here, and get you checked out,” she says, still tense as they head back in the dark the same way they arrived.

“Thank you,” Phil says to her when they reach the mouth of the alley, a hand on her elbow, familiar.

“For reminding me of what I'm not.”

“Sure,” she replies, glancing up, then caught by the look of certainty there. It's not the bravado confidence worn like Coulson's suit.

It's something more tender, beneath the surface, like seeing something shimmer hidden under ripples of water.

A light shines into the alley from the street, harsh and hitting her face, then Phil's shoulder.

Before she can react, she feels her back against the brick and their mouth on hers, kissing her gently, precisely. Carefully.

It takes a moment for her to realize that the light has passed over them, that the sound of the tires on the pavement is more distant.

That she has closed her eyes and feels so warm and dangerously close to doing more than just letting herself be kissed.

“Training 101,” Phil says to her in a quiet voice, as her eyes flutter open to meet his in the low light.

Like they needed something clever to fill the space between them.

Like their thoughts have wandered elsewhere, too.


End file.
